


The Fall

by greeniethewritermouse



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/F, F/M, M/M, Post-Season/Series 04, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2019-10-31 06:06:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17843864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeniethewritermouse/pseuds/greeniethewritermouse
Summary: When she comes back online. Her mouth is dry and tastes like something died in it, and her head is still killing her but she feels more with it.She’s strapped down and her bones are shaking the way she’s come to associate with moving spacecraft.When she blinks her eyes open she’s both surprised and not surprised to see that she’s strapped into a seat in the rumbling dropship.Wells is beside her.“Welcome back,” he says.





	1. Chapter 1

When Clarke comes around, her head feels like it’s splitting open and there’s a young black man in a _skaikru_ guard uniform standing over her.  

“Prisoner 319,” he says, jaw clenched. “Are you alright?”

It takes Clarke a second to place him. Travis Thomas. He had a weekly rotation in solitary while Clarke was in the Sky Box. He’d never talked much to her, never called her by name because he was too stiff and professional to bend the rules. He’d brought her an extra quarter ration of soup once when contamination had given her food poisoning.

“Fell,” she says automatically.

It’s true after all. She did fall.

It was stupid. Surviving over two thousand days after _praimfaya_ only to fall into a sinkhole filled with apocalyptically irradiated something just along the edge of the valley.

Travis Thomas frowns at her and probes carefully at her head. Her hair is pulled back. Her hair is too short to tie back.

If she was hallucinating the Sky Box she must really be in a bad way.

Her _natjus_ might not be enough to save her this time. It would be a relief to know she is probably done, except for Madi. Except for her friends that she has to assume are living, else go insane.

“No obvious head injury,” Travis Thomas tells her. “Stay put, 319.”

He stands in one fluid motion and leaves her sprawled on the cold concrete of the Sky Box floor.

He doesn’t go far.

“Dr. Griffin,” he calls out.

Clarke blinks and the next thing she knows her mom is kneeling beside her. Her father’s watch is gone and one of the medical bands her mom helped to develop and implement for the 100 is lying heavy on her right wrist.

“Mom?”

“I’m here, baby,” she says, stroking back her hair. “What happened?”

“Fell,” Clarke breathes, “Stupid.”

“It’s okay sweetheart. You’re fine. Your pupils are responsive and there’s nothing out of the norm with your vitals. You just have a bad bump.”

“My head is killing me,” Clarke agrees. “You’re not really here.”

“I’m here,” Abby Griffin promises. “Listen to me Clarke, I don’t have a lot of time.”

Clarke nods her head and winces as her brain sends a sharp pain in splintered waves arcing from one temple to the other at the motion. It makes sense though. The people in the bunker, it’s been so long. They probably don’t have a lot of time left. There’s just no way that she and Madi can dig them out. The tower collapsed on top of them. There’s too much rubble and no way of moving some of the larger slabs not even with the rover. It might as well be a mountain on top of them.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke mutters. “ _Ai laik Wanheda_. I don’t know how to save you.”

Her mother gets a worried little crinkle between her eyes but forces a smile anyway, petting her hair again.

“Don’t worry about that sweetie, we’ll figure it out. You need to focus on yourself,” she says, stern and serious, cupping Clarke’s face in her hands. “Clarke, you’re going to the ground.”

Clarke wants to laugh a bit.

“Already on the ground, mom.”

“No, Clarke, I mean Earth. You’re going to Earth.”

Clarke can still feel the laughter rattling and rusty and threatening to crawl up out of her chest. She almost lets it. It’s been so long since she laughed.

She must have rattled her brain good if this is the best it can come up with. Her hallucinations are usually much more ahead of the curve.

Still though.

“Ah, mom, it’s okay. _Ai gonplei ste odon_. I’m glad I got to see you, though. I missed you.”

Her mother looks pleased at that even if she’s still clearly worried.

“I missed you too baby. Listen to me though. You know what’s happening to the Ark. Earth is your best chance at survival. I know, I know that you’ll try to take care of everyone except yourself. You’re as stubborn as your father that way, but I need you to promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Dr. Griffin?” queries Travis Thomas. “We need to move through this sector on schedule.”

“It’ll be better if she’s sedated, Thomas.”

Travis Thomas nods.

She watches him raise his weapon in slow motion. There’s a pneumonic hiss and her arm stings right in the join between her neck and shoulder.

“I love you, Clarke,” her mom murmurs, pressing a fierce kiss to her temple. “Stay safe.”

She’s already woozy though when she manages to take hold of the empty capsule. She pulls is out sharply and touches her hand to the tingling spot. Her vision is swimming and she’s losing hold but when she makes the colossal effort to bring the wet smear on her fingers up to her face, she thinks she notices that the smear is red…

But that can't be right. 


	2. Chapter 2

When she fights through the black fog and back into wakefulness Clarke’s mouth is dry as dust and tastes like something’s died in it and her head is still killing her, but her mind is a little clearer.

She tries to move for a moment but she’s strapped down tight and her bones are shaking. When she blinks her eyes open, she’s both surprised and not surprised to see that she’s strapped into a seat on the rumbling dropship.

Wells is beside her.

“Welcome back,” he says.

It sounds a little like a joke to Clarke, so she musters a small smile.

“I thought I’d managed to forget about you,” she tells this familiar ghost.

Wells looks a bit hurt at that.

“Yeah, well, I’m still here.”

“Looks like it,” Clarke agrees.

Wells sighs. It sounds just like she remembers, and she thinks that, if the hallucinatory environment allowed for it, he’d scrub his hands over the back of his head the way he always used to when he was frustrated.

It’s nice to know she still remembers all these little details.

“Look, Clarke,” he says, all in a rush, “I know I’m probably the last person you want to see right now, but, when I found out they were sending prisoners to the ground I got myself arrested. I had to. You’re still the best friend I’ve ever had. I couldn’t let you do it alone.”

“Yeah, I know Wells.”

They hit the atmosphere just then, right on cue, and some of the other kids scream.

“What was that?” asks the one of the girls above them. Maybe Monroe?

“We’ve hit the atmosphere,” Wells calls up. “Everybody brace yourselves for a rough landing!”

“Screw you, Wells!” someone else shouts.

Clarke would bet ten ration credits that Murphy is the culprit. She shakes her head at the best friend she’d lost a lifetime ago.

“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into Wells, you’re going to get yourself killed, and it’s going to feel like my fault even if it’s not.”

“Yeah, well, back at you,” Wells says. “And you know as well as I do it’s even odds for survival whether I came or stayed on the Ark. Maybe better odds down here.”

The lights flicker as the dropship reroutes power for an incoming transmission and the blue emergency lighting clicks on as do the screens bolted to the walls of the dropship.

It’s been a while since she’s seen Jaha but he looks decades younger than she remembers up on that screen.

‘ _Prisoners of the Ark_ ,’ the transmission begins, ‘ _Hear me now. You’ve been given a second chance. And I hope that you will come to see it not just as a chance for yourselves, but a chance for all of us. A chance for mankind itself. I will be frank, we have no idea what awaits you down there and if the odds of survival were better we would have sent someone else. As it is, your crimes make you expendable and your youth makes you resilient_.’

“Your dad’s a dick, Wells!” another boy calls.

‘ _If you do survive, those crimes will be forgiven. Your records wiped clean. And you will have the same opportunities as anyone else from the Ark. Your drop site has been chosen carefully. Before the war Mount Weather, a US military base built within a mountain, was to be stocked with enough non-perishables to support 300 people for up to two years. No one ever made it there_.’

Clarke snorts at that, wondering for the first time where Jaha was getting his information. In her memory here he seems so sure. But the first President Wallace did make it to Mount Weather with his family before the bombs fell or at least before the radiation spread and made it impossible to travel. And there must have been others given that a single family sealed within a mountain couldn’t possibly have grown into the colony of Mountain Men she destroyed a lifetime ago.

Just then another ghost floats into her peripheral vision.

“Spacewalk bandit strikes again!” someone calls out with a whoop.

Finn Collins does a slow spin through the air and settles in front of them looking so damn young and foolish and desperately handsome. This was the way she’d always hoped to remember Finn, even though she never really did.

“Well, look at that, Wells,” he says, smirking. “Your dad floated me after all.”

“Get back in your seat, idiot,” Clarke snaps. “Before you get yourself and anyone stupid enough to think you ever have good ideas killed.”

Just because she’s glad this hallucination isn’t staring at her with sad heart-rending eyes doesn’t mean she’s going to put up with his crap. She’s had enough time to get deeply bitter about all the pain she’d suffered from Finn Collins’ impulsive actions.

“She’s right,” Wells says immediately, loyally. “If you don’t strap in before the parachutes deploy the whiplash could snap your neck.”

Finn ignores Wells and gives her a familiar curious smile. It’s the smile that means he can’t understand what she’s thinking but he’s having fun making guesses. She’d fallen in love with that smile, once upon a time. More the pity for her. 

“You’re the traitor whose been in solitary for a year,” he says.

“You’re the moron who wasted a month of oxygen we couldn’t afford to lose on an illegal spacewalk.”

She knows he did it for Raven, to make her happy. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was selfish, and it cut short a lot of lives.

“I’m Finn,” he tells her.

She gives him her coldest look.

“Get back in your seat.”

His face visibly shutters but he shrugs carelessly and kicks away.

“Whatever you say, princess.”

“Don’t call me that! And you two!” Clarke’s pleased to hear that her voice cracks like a whip.

The kids startle.

“If you want to live stay in your damn seats!”

The two teenagers pout and flip her off but when they see Finn strap back in, they stay buckled.

That’s never happened in any of her guilt induced nightmares before and it stirs a frisson of something in her gut.

‘ _Mount Weather is life_ ,’ Jaha declares on the screen.

“The mountain is death,” Clarke mutters.

‘ _You must get to those supplies_. _Your only responsibility going forward is to survive. At any cost. Good luck to you all. May we meet again._ ’

The transmission cuts off and the wiring in the dropship starts sending off sparks as something pulls free and the ship starts to spin.

Clarke feels bile crawling up her throat, an unpleasant and surprisingly visceral sensation.

“The retrorockets should have fired by now,” Wells says.

“You got the drop timing memorized or something?” Clarke pants, trying not to be sick. “Relax, Wells. Everything on this ship is over a hundred years old. Give it a minute.”

“How can you be so calm when we’re about to die?” Wells demands shrilly.

“We’re not going to die here.”

Wells shakes his head. His eyes are round and rimmed perfectly with white. He’s terrified.

“You’re crazy, Clarke,” he says, with a chuckle that edges into hysterical. “I just need you to know, I’m sorry. I betrayed your trust and got your father arrested. I know there’s nothing I can say to make it right, but I did what I thought was best for the Ark and I can’t die knowing that you hate me!”

“I don’t hate you Wells,” Clarke tells him, shouting to be heard over the straining metal. “I know it wasn’t you. I’ve known for a while. It was my mother. She told the council and she was wrong to do it. But it was a long time ago. And even if I haven’t forgiven her, I’m just done, Wells. I’m done being angry about it.”

Wells just gapes at her like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing.

The retrorockets fire and they lose the emergency lighting. Something else on their piece-of-crap ship comes free and Clarke is thrown against her seatbelt. The sudden movement makes her gag for a second, but her stomach is more or less empty so nothing much comes up.

All around them kids are screaming or shouting. And Clarke closes her eyes and lets it wash over her. The noise is killing her head, but for all the trouble with the drop the landing is soft enough.

Something crunches as the ship settles. Probably a tree. And then, then everything is quiet.

The emergency lighting continues to flicker and then steadies, dimmer than before.

“Listen,” she hears Monty say. “No hum.”

“That’s a first,” says Jasper.

It’s not a first for Clarke. But she’s grateful for a moment of quiet so that her headache can ease to a dull throb.

All around her buckles click open. And she hears someone shout, “The outer door is on the lower level! Let’s go!”

A pair of big hands unfasten her seatbelts.

“You alright?” Wells asks.

Clarke opens her eyes and gives him a wry smile.

“Took a bad fall earlier. I’m fine.”

He gathers her up into a hug jostling her a bit. But her hallucination is giving her the full tactile experience. He’s big and warm and he smells like a vacuum seal, stress sweat and something indefinable but purely Wells that triggers about a hundred sense memories from their childhood.

“I missed you,” he says into her hair. “I missed you so much.”

“Yeah, me too,” Clarke murmurs.

It’s true.

She has more ghosts now, and more friends. But she still misses Wells, who is the oldest of both, every day. Whatever the radiation is doing to her dying brain she’s going to damn well enjoy it as long as she can.

“Come on,” Wells says finally, pulling away. “We gotta keep these kids from doing something stupid and getting themselves killed.”

It’s then that Clarke notices that the bodies of the two boys who’d died in the drop aren’t there.

That’s right, she thinks to herself vaguely. I saved them this time.

She stares for another long moment at the empty spaces and she doesn’t see Finn.

She follows Wells down to the lower level and trails in his wake as he shoves through the crowd.

Clarke doesn’t know why but she’s surprised to see Bellamy. He looks young, freshly shaven and dressed in a guard uniform, his curls slicked back.

“Just back it up guys,” he says, ushering the crowd away from the door. “When the airlock unseals you won’t wanna be too close.”

“Wait!” Wells calls out. “Stop! We can’t just open the doors! The air could be toxic, you could kill us all!”

“If the air is toxic,” Bellamy points out, “We’re all dead anyway.”

He doesn’t even look at her. His eyes slide right over her and it makes Clarke’s skin crawl because Bellamy hasn’t been indifferent to her presence since the moment they first spoke to each other…an interaction that has just played out between him and Wells.

“Bellamy?”

The question is soft, hesitant. But it’s enough, somehow, to quiet the crowd of jittery kids. No one is quite brave enough to push past Bellamy and Wells and open the door and they watch with rapt attention as Octavia climbs down from one of the upper levels.

“That’s the girl they hid under the floor,” someone tries to whisper, but voices carry in a big metal drum.

For the moment though Bellamy and Octavia don’t seem bothered.

“My god,” he says. “Look how big you are.”

And then Octavia throws herself into her brother’s arms.

It’s strange. Why is she reliving this? Why don’t the ghosts of Bellamy and Octavia seem to notice that she’s here? If this is a hallucination, and Clarke is starting to have her doubts, it’s the most random and benign one she’s ever experienced.

“What the hell are you wearing?” Octavia demands. “A guard’s uniform, Bell? Really?”

“I borrowed it to get onto the dropship,” he shrugs, and gives his sister a disarming grin, “Someone’s got to keep an eye on you.”

“You’re not wearing a wristband,” Wells points out, shifting from foot to foot.

“Do you mind?” Octavia snaps. “I haven’t seen my brother in over a year, no thanks to your father.”

“O,” Bellamy says softly.

Clarke puts a hand on Wells’ shoulder to stop him from pushing.

Funnily that’s when Bellamy’s eyes catch hers. She’s looking over Wells’ shoulder and he over Octavia’s and their eyes meet just for a second.

She offers him a small wry smile and she watches his face start to scrunch slightly in a familiar combination of suspicion and confusion when some idiot says: “No one has a brother.”

Bellamy and Octavia both turn and give the crowd identical black scowls.

“That’s Octavia Blake!” someone else shouts. “The girl under the floor.”

Clarke pinches the bridge of her nose. None of this is helping her headache. Bellamy reacts quickly and stops Octavia from getting into a fist-fight with whichever insensitive idiot made that comment, calling out over the crowd: “Why don’t we give them something else to remember you by?”

“Yeah, like what?” Octavia retorts.

“How about being the first person on the ground in over a hundred years?” he suggests.

Octavia looks at her brother like he hung the moon just for her. Clarke knows the feeling.

 The monumental first moments of their return to the ground unfold just like they did before. Bellamy pulls the lever without hesitation. The airlock door depressurizes, and the ramp hits the the ground.

Octavia is gapes out at the world and takes the first hesitant steps out into the fresh air, breathing deeply.

Clarke holds her breath. She’s still waiting for this to turn into a nightmare. To see _praimfaya_ rolling over the tops of the trees, to watch Octavia or Bellamy’s beautiful face stipple and burn and then dissolve away.

But it doesn’t. They don’t.

Octavia whoops, and shouts: “We’re back bitches!”

Then the rest of the kids are screaming and jostling to get outside.

Clarke stumbles as Murphy pushes past her shoulder and follows the sudden surge of kids out into the bright sunshine of a green, living Earth.

Clarke draws in a deep breath letting it fill her lungs and reveling in the scent of green and growing things. The forest is dense. A lush a wall of damp green dappled with golden sunlight for as far as the eye can see. Clarke remembers what it was like, to see this for the first time. She remembers the terrifying swell of wonder, of hope, that had filled her before she remembered that she was on the clock. And it was counting down.

“Clarke!” prompts Wells, laughing as he drags her down the ramp, slinging an arm over her shoulder and pulling her into a half-hug, “Look!”

His smile is wide and bright against the dark skin of his face as he spins them in a careful circle.

The clearing is dotted with grass and shrubs and behind them a few trees have caught listless fire in the landing the moisture of the foliage is keeping the fire from spreading too quickly. In some places it’s already sputtering out and leaving smoke.

She can also see the deep slopes of Mount Weather to the north and east. She shivers to see it so close.

From the valley, Mount Weather is just one peak among many. Here it looms with threat.

None of this makes sense.

Why is she reliving this, of all things?

She can feel the wind ruffling the fine hairs on her arms and the warmth of the sun on her skin. She can smell woodsmoke and cedar and crushed grass. She can feel the flex and contraction of Wells’ biceps across her shoulders.

Her head hurts.

Wells babbles something about the mountain and a map that Clarke doesn’t pay too much attention to. Instead she folds herself into the shade of a tree and counts backwards from one-hundred on her fingers because she remembers her mom telling her that you can’t in dreams. She doesn’t know if that holds true for hallucinations, but she manages the count easily and it’s disquieting.

This whole situation is disquieting.

Her head is still throbbing cruelly, but her mind is becoming sharper the longer she’s out in the fresh air.

She bites down on the edge of a hanging nail, hard. The blood welling up is bright red and tastes sharply of copper.

The saturation of the color is a little startling after spending six years as a _natblida_. 

The new pain is clear and sharp.

Clarke’s hands begin to shake.

She’s grateful when Wells comes to join her under the tree with the single backpack full of maps and the sparse first aid kit.

“Well I’ve got bad news, and I’ve got worse news,” he says.

“Worst first,” Clarke tells him. “You know the rules.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got no communication. I got up onto the roof and there’ve got to be a dozen panels missing. The heat of re-entry fried it all.”

“Great,” Clarke drawls, unsurprised.

“The bad news is that my father really didn’t leave us anything, no food, no water, one back pack with a small medkit and a few old maps.”

“Even better.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. Anyway, we’re not going to be able to get directions from the Ark. So, I figure, it’s going to take some searching to find the entrance to this secret military base, but if we look closely at the topography, between the two of us we can probably narrow down a search area.”

“We’re not on Mount Weather,” Clarke tells him blandly.

“What do you mean?”

Clarke points.

“Look here at the elevations. Mount Weather is the highest peak in the range for miles and it’s bordered by a steep ridge on the western slope. Look at the position of the sun. That’s Mount Weather, there.”

She points to the tip of the mountain just visible through the trees. The slope drops at what looks like a ninety-degree angle. It’s bare of green and when she gets up with Wells he swears quietly as he compares the land to the map, noting the sharp drop at the edge of the ravine.

“Shit. I think you’re right,” he says eventually.

“Just looking I’d say it’s a twenty, or thirty-mile hike, as the crow flies. It’d take us more than a day to get there.”

“They dropped us on the wrong mountain.”

“And there’s a dense, radiation-soaked forest filled with god only knows what between us and those supplies.”

“Alright, well that’s just fantastic,” Wells says, rolling up the map and scrubbing at the back of his head in frustration. “Let’s head back to the ship. There’s better light, we can plot the hike more easily.”

Clarke follows him idly back to the others.

The teens have already started breaking off into cliques or pairing up to make out in the underbrush along the outskirts of camp.

They skirt around a couple getting a little too naked and back into the clearing proper. Wells unrolls the map to its full length, using the dropship’s ramp like a workbench. He sets a rock at each corner to keep it open.

Clarke picks up a still-warm piece of charcoal to draw with and a bit of metal that looks more or less straight.

“Here’s the minimum distance,” she says, drawing the direct line. “Twenty-six miles.”

“No too bad, maybe a day, day and a half of hiking at a good pace. We’re all strong. Healthy.”

“Yeah, except—” she sketches out the path of least resistance given the topography, “—this is our actual route. And it’s thirty-seven miles. Roughly.”

Wells sighs. “It’s not ideal but I’d rather get moving towards the food and reliable shelter, start looking for water while we have the energy. We can always send people back to scavenge parts from the dropship.”

Clarke looks up at Wells, studying him from behind the curtain of her hair, and trying to think critically.

 The hundred cannot go to the mountain. It doesn’t matter if this is a dream or a hallucination or whatever. Clarke will never, ever, let any _skaikru_ under her protection go back there while the _Maunon_ are in residence, and possibly not even after. 

But she can’t just say that.

Not when she’s starting to doubt that this is all a product of her own mind. If there’s any chance that she can keep her people away, for good, she has to take it.

So, she gives Wells her most skeptical look.

“You’re going to try and march a hundred teenagers who hate you away from guaranteed shelter into an irradiated forest on the word of your father, the only man living they hate more than you?”

“Well, when you say it like that it sounds stupid,” Wells says. “But Clarke, we need to eat. We need real shelter. We have to assume that the radiation might already be killing us and try to minimize exposure.”

“The plant-life is doing fine.”

“Yeah, you really want to take that risk?”

Clarke doesn’t know how she’s going to do it, what she can say, but she needs to turn Wells away from the idea of Mount Weather.

“I don’t know, Wells, I—”

That’s when Jasper interrupts.

“Hey, cool, a map,” he says with a flirty grin for Clarke. “They got a bar in this town? I’ll buy you a drink.”

Wells moves to intercept Jasper before he can put whatever moves he thinks he can get away with on Clarke, and Murphy and Mbege roll up with their little crew, and all of a sudden Clarke is in the middle of a pissing contest.

She’d forgotten this. What it was like those first few days before she and Bellamy had reined everyone in. When she was pretty sure Murphy was the next best thing to irredeemable and his crew were nothing but thugs. When she was pretty sure Bellamy was more of the same, just a little more charming.

But that crew includes Atom and Drew and Miller. And even Murphy himself has it in him to be good. If she can make him listen to her.

Not for the first time she wishes she had Bellamy’s easy charisma. He draws people in naturally. She, on the other hand, is traditionally, immediately disliked. She almost always gains her support by having everyone’s best interests at heart and by occasionally pulling off impossible last-minute rescues after any and all reasonable people have given up trying.

Everyone in the vicinity has stopped what they’re doing to watch them, and Wells seems to realize there’s more danger in this then there was in Jasper getting ideas or a look at the length of their route.

“Look, relax. We’re just trying to figure out where we are, come up with a plan,” Wells says, trying to diffuse the situation he’s unwittingly sparked.

“We’re on the ground,” Bellamy cuts in. “Is that really not good enough for you?”

Wells glances back at her for support, but she’s not about to advocate for going to Mount Weather for him. These kids won’t follow Wells. Not yet. Maybe not ever. To his credit. He doesn’t back down. Stubborn to the last.

“Look,” he says, moving towards Bellamy, opening up his body language and preparing, no doubt, to use all the tricks he learned watching his father to try and win him over to his side. “We need to get to Mount Weather. You heard what my father said. That needs to be our first priority.”

“Screw your father,” says Octavia, predictably, and with venom.

Wells rocks back a half-step, surprised at her vehemence, and Octavia presses her advantage. “What? Did you think you would be in charge down here? You and your little princess?”

Wells doesn’t know how to respond to that either. But Clarke does.

“Pick another fight, Octavia,” she says, stepping forward and raising her voice, keeping her tone mild and hoping she sounds compelling to these kids.

She turns a slow circle, taking them all in, and then calls a little louder so even the kids at the edge of the clearing can hear.

“This isn’t about me or Wells or who’s in charge. There are now one hundred of us alive on the ground. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my concern is making sure that there are still one hundred of us alive on the ground tomorrow, and next week, and in three months and in three years.”

Wells jumps in.

“We need to get those supplies to make that happen. They’re the only sure resource we’ve got down here. We don’t know anything about this place. We need to find food, water, shelter, meds. We need to fortify, not because my father said so but because it is the best way for us to survive down here!” he declares to the group at large. “We have to consider the facts, people. We don’t know if there is anything we can eat down here. Hell, we don’t know that we haven’t already absorbed enough radiation to kill us! And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would feel better sleeping behind leaded walls with a guaranteed food source on hand until we can figure out how screwed we actually are.”

“It looks like a thirty-seven-mile hike through the deeper parts of the woods. It would take us two days at top speed. Longer if we branch off to look for water, which we’ll need to find before our three days are up.” Clarke says it grimly, since although she would normally be in complete agreement with Wells, she has no intention of taking these kids to the mountain. “Until we find food and water, we’re just going to get weaker.”

“Well, a nature hike does sound like fun, princess,” Bellamy says, unapologetically sarcastic. “But why go through all that effort and risk everyone’s safety when the two of you can go and bring those supplies back to us. Let’s see the privileged do the hard work for a change!”

“Yeah!” cheer the rest of the hundred, who are mainly from farm and factory stations, with a spattering of mecha kids like Finn.

She, Miller, and Wells are the only Alpha kids down here. And if it weren’t for Bellamy Blake, her Bellamy Blake. She might never have noticed.

“You’re not listening,” Wells says, stepping towards Bellamy. “We _all_ need to go.”

Wells has good instincts. Rather than attempting to appeal to the kids himself he tries to convince Bellamy, who the other kids are ready to follow even now.

“We don’t have time to argue about it!”

Unfortunately, Murphy is a dick.

“Look at this everyone, Wells here thinks he’s the Chancellor of Earth.”

Murphy pushes Wells and Wells makes that quietly pissed face, the one that makes him look like Jaha.

And even if Clarke wasn’t living her own memories, she would have known right then that everything was about to go completely sideways.

And she can’t let it happen. And she doesn’t have to let it happen.

She knows how to fight. In fact, she’s a pretty good fighter. Maybe not better than the Murphy she knows, but she’s definitely good enough to take the Murphy she remembers.

She shoves Mbege out of her way and yanks Murphy back by the collar of his shirt.

“ _En pleni_!” she snaps, without thinking too carefully. “Back off, Murphy. Attack him, and you deal with me.”

He smirks, rolling his neck and shoulders.

“Fair enough, little princess.”

Murphy strikes out with a quick jab that would have given her a bloody nose, but she manages a swift dodge, catches Murphy’s outstretched arm, and flips him over her shoulder, hard, knocking the wind out of him.

There’s a general sympathetic: “Oh!” from the crowd, and someone calls out, “Yeah, Blondie, get it!”

Murphy tries to kick her ankle out from under her, but she’s half-expecting it and dances out of the way letting him stagger to his feet with a cough.

He rushes her before he’s fully recovered his breath. And he’s fast and strong. But then, so is Clarke. And she’s had more experience. She’s at a disadvantage, of course, because this body doesn’t remember the way her mind does but it’s enough.

She blocks or dodges his punches, keeping them moving in tight circles until she sees her chance.

A knee in the gut and a hard shove send Murphy sprawling back into the dirt.

He’s scowling, but he doesn’t try to attack her directly again. 

“Anyone else have a problem with me or Wells?” she calls, spreading her arms and turning in a slow circle. “We can settle this right now.”

Bellamy is staring at her like he’s trying to burn a hole in her head, and Clarke is half-way expecting Octavia to challenge her just for the hell of it.

Of course, though, it’s Mbege that steps forward.

He’s not quite as big as Bellamy or as broad shouldered as Wells, but he’s not small for a teenager. She doesn’t remember too much about him other than the fact that he and Murphy were a matched set until Murphy got himself exiled. If he’s friends with Murphy she can assume he’s at least a little vicious.

He grins at her and cracks his neck.

“Clarke, stop this!” Wells hisses. “He’s twice your size.”

“Yeah well, the bigger they are,” she says without bothering to look back.

They circle each other a bit. Mbege gets his arms up to guard his head and neck and Clarke smirks. Sometimes being short has its advantages.

She doesn’t wait for him to attack. Instead she jerks forward in a feint she learned from Madi, and when he overbalances trying to follow the movement, she kicks him in the knee. Not hard enough to break it, just enough to bring him to the ground. While he’s doubled over, she knees him in the face and then uses her leverage to yank him forward and send him sprawling.

He’s not badly injured since her body is weaker than she’s used to, but he bit his tongue at some point and there’s blood dripping down his chin which looks impressive, and that’s really all she needs.

That, and for Mbege to back off. Which he does, thankfully.

“Fuck you’re fast,” he grunts, spitting bloody mucous.

“Jesus, Clarke,” says Wells.

Clarke doesn’t look back at him. She knows he knows how to fight. Kane taught them both some self-defence, but he was always the target of more assassination attempts. Funnily all those attempts on his life convinced him that violence isn’t the answer.

Clarke on the other hand has learned through repeated, painful experience that violence is often the opening argument in a successful negotiation.

“Anyone else?” she offers quietly.

She’s not sure what her face is doing but a couple of the kids closest to her look uncomfortable and Bellamy steps forward.

“Alright, princess, you’ve made your point.”

“Have I?”

Clarke looks up at him, but his face is a blank wall, except for the tiniest of furrows between his brows that means he’s worried. Other than that, she can’t get a read on him, so she turns away and faces the crowd of gathered kids.

These are her people, the original 100. _Skaikru_.

They’ve never felt more real to her. More present. She has their undivided attention now, in this stolen moment, and she can do more with that here and now than she ever could then.

In moments like these she feels closest to Lexa. To _Heda_. Lexa was wrong about so many things, but she was a beloved leader and she could command any room with a look. She was never swayed from a course of action she believed was best.

Clarke has never had that kind of trust, that power, for long. She spent it fruitlessly, carelessly, never giving that trust back in full. Always too afraid that they would take her power away, make the wrong decisions as a collective and leave her helpless to save them or fix it.

Jasper told her that if she wanted people to follow her, she had to convince them. Monty cautioned that she always went too far, using tired, old justifications. Raven said she was poison.

All her friends had, at one time or another, told her she was a shit leader.

Here in this moment she isn’t the leader. She isn’t Wanheda or Mountain Slayer, Chancellor, Ambassador or foster mother. No one in this time and place expects her to be anything but Clarke Griffin, pampered Alpha Station princess.  

She could walk away. Here and now. She could disappear into the forest and become someone else. Or no one. She could stay, and help but not interfere. Just another body. She could see what might become of her people without her influence.

If she’s really the problem then that’s the solution. Easy as breathing.

Clarke has been exhausted for so long, crumbling under the weight of expectation and loneliness, crippled by guilt and regret.

Sick with loss.

She’s lost so much. She’s taken so much from people who don’t deserve it. From people that do deserve it.

All because she can’t let go. She should just let go.

She should.

Instead Clarke begins to move, pacing the edge of the crowd in a measured stride.

“Has anybody wondered why they sent us down here?” she asks. “The planet surface wasn’t supposed to be survivable for another hundred years. So why now, why us? What changed?”

“Maybe they found something,” suggests Monty. “An old weather satellite. Something.”

“They did find something. My dad, Jake Griffin, found something. He found a flaw in the Ark’s life-support systems. The Ark is dying.”

“That why they locked you up?” Finn asks. “You knew too much?”

“We wanted to tell people. We were going to go public. But the council didn’t want to start a panic. Not when there was no solution to offer. No hope. This drop is their last best hope for saving the current population of the Ark. With us gone they’ve bought themselves another month of oxygen. If we can survive down here, they’ll have time to figure out a way to get to the surface.”

“What if we can’t?” Miller asks. “What if Wells is right, and we’re already dying?”

“It would all depend,” Clarke says. “The wristbands my mother designed will transmit our vital signs to the Ark. If we start dying, they’ll have to use the data to figure out if their chances are better here or in space. But my guess would be that they’d cull population, down to the bare minimum essential personnel. All women. One at least with medical training, an engineer, and a farmer and use the genetic bank to repopulate in a hundred years when they know it will be safe. They’ll float two-thousand people, our families and friends, to save the human race.”

“You don’t know that,” said Bellamy quietly.

Clarke turns to look at him. His freckles are standing out starkly against his face.

“What other choice would they have? If the Earth isn’t survivable, they have nowhere else to go.”

The kids all start to mutter amongst themselves. They’re pale and scared now, some of them have wrapped their arms around themselves, and they shiver, even though the forest is sun-warmed and lovely.

Clarke hates that this is only the tip of the iceberg. That the grounders want to kill them, that the mountain wants to use them, that ALIE wants to subsume their free-will and trap them in an illusion, that they only have a few years before _praimfaya_ rolls over the planet again, leaving it mostly dead and bare.

She hates that all she knows of their future is pain and suffering. That she doesn’t know how to stop it. That she’s never known. That maybe there is no way to stop it.

Of course, none of that is anything these kids need to hear.

“Look, I know it’s a lot. I realize that those people up there making decisions about everyone’s future and hiding the truth represent everything you probably hate. They sent us down here like lab rats to die, because we’re expendable. Because we’re lively and resourceful and we don’t follow their rules when we think there’s a better way,” Clarke says. “We don’t have to forgive them for screwing us over when they really don’t deserve it. But we are going to live! I’ll make sure of it, no matter what. And we should live to be better than them. We’ll save their sorry asses, and the lives of the hundreds of innocent people up there who have no idea what’s going on and don’t deserve to be floated for mistakes they didn’t make. It’s going to be hard. It’s a lot to ask. I know. But this is me asking, not telling, so _please_ , just let me and Wells and Bellamy do what we can to keep us all alive!”

Bellamy looks startled to be mentioned. Wells is looking at her like she hung the moon. The rest of the kid are muttering and nodding. A low hum of reluctant approval. Or at least that’s what it sounds like.

“So,” Finn says. “Mount Weather, when do we leave?”

“Let Bellamy, Wells and I talk it over,” Clarke says, since she really has no intention of letting any one of the hundred near the mountain. “In the meantime, spacewalker, why don’t you take a few volunteers and scout the area. Try to find water. But be careful and don’t wander too far from camp. If the ground _is_ survivable, we don’t know what else might be down here.”

Finn nods and then grins over at the assembled.

“You heard the princess! Who wants to take a stroll?”

“I’m in,” says Octavia immediately, throwing Finn a flirty look. “Let’s go, spacewalker.”

And since that is trouble just waiting to happen Clarke is glad to see Monroe and Drew peel off and go with them.

A few other small groups break off and go in different directions.

Clarke turns her attention to Bellamy and Wells.

“So that was both terrifying and awesome,” Wells says, conversationally. “You don’t waste time.”

“We don’t have time to waste,” Clarke points out. “If I hadn’t told them how long would it have been until they started trying to take the wristbands off? You know my father’s projections. It’ll take six months to even try and fix the life support. That means if Earth isn’t a viable option the council will authorize a culling of three hundred people in the next two weeks.”

“Jesus,” Bellamy blurts out. “How can you talk about this like it’s…nothing? Like it’s just another day?”

He’s looking a little green around the gills. Clarke can sympathize.

“Look, Blake, right?” says Wells. “I know what the other stations think of Alpha. I’ve heard it all before. That we’re privileged, selfish and cold. But these are the decisions our parents are faced with every day. We’ve learned to plan for the worst possible outcome because every day there’s another new crisis that people can’t know about. One that is our job to fix.”

“Welcome to being a leader,” Clarke adds.

“Why me?” asks Bellamy. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I did to get down here.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” says Wells.

It surprises Clarke. It shouldn’t though. Between the two of them Wells has always been better. Less uptight and more forgiving. If they’re both immovable and immutable as stone Clarke is a jagged peaked mountain and Wells is a beloved monument polished to a high sheen.

“These kids will take more convincing before they ever trust an alpha station brat over one of their own. And you’re charismatic, and resourceful, and currently the only legal adult on the ground,” Clarke adds. “You’re the perfect choice to be a leader.”

“You don’t know me very well, princess,” Bellamy says, dismissive and self-deprecating.

Clarke wants to laugh. How long has it been since _that_ ’s happened? But it would probably be weird, given that from Bellamy’s perspective they’ve only just met.

She settles for a grin that crinkles her eyes up at the corners.

“Maybe,” she tells him. “But I’ve got a good feeling.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter went through a major direction switch after I had the chance to finish season 3 so let me know if it feels choppy anywhere!
> 
> also of course, as always, let me know what you like and what you'd like to see! your comments are my motivation!

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't even made it to season four in the show, I just spoiled myself with time-travel clexa fics and then spent like three days reading Chash's bellarke awesomeness and decided I needed a really great time-travel fix it fic where bellarke featured heavily. So...I'm just diving in. 
> 
> Let me know what you all think and what changes you'd like to see!


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